“Well if it isn’t fingers of fury! How many calls did you make while I was zonked out?” I was annoyed with all of these conversations and decisions happening without me.
“I shouldn’t have to convince you to take your own safety seriously.”
“You don’t,” I told him. “But there is no way I’m giving up on this.”
“Salem told me about Parker’s stay in Glen-Willow,” Jimmy whispered. “He has an alibi for Summer’s death.”
“Well if it wasn’t Parker, he could have hired someone. He’s hinky, Jimmy. He started to freak out, and I started to get threats the moment I started to look into him. If he was innocent, then why react that way?”
“You don’t know it was him.”
“The flowers in the box with the rat were daffodils, Jimmy. Summer’s favorite.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Of course it was him.
“I know what her favorite flower is,” he snapped.
I didn’t understand why this conversation was going so poorly. Jimmy was scared for me. I understood that, but angry?
“Do you understand that you’re in the middle of an attempted murder investigation now?”
“What?”
“You can’t go back to tracking Parker, let the police do it. If they catch you in his office building or anything like that, they’ll get you for interfering in an investigation. If they find out you planted an illegal keystroke logger on Parker’s computer you’ll get arrested.”
My stomach knotted, and I got angry. I couldn’t give up. Not now. Summer deserved the truth, and I doubted the local police were going to find it. Not with a powerful family like the Evans’s using their money and influence.
I needed to call Salem and let him know to keep clear of Veno Pharmaceuticals. He’d planned to clear the key logger receiver and put it back in the plant today. I looked around and realized my purse and everything in it had been strewn all over the ravine last night. I closed my eyes and rubbed them.
“I have to call Salem.”
Jimmy wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “I already warned him to stay away from Parker,” he murmured. “And before you say it, we’re already on our way to meet him.”
I smiled my thanks and leaned back on the leather seat closing my eyes. I wasn’t sleepy, but I needed to think and the headache pounding wasn’t making it easy. Jimmy left me alone.
There were several things missing in all of this. My investigations were usually planned out, thought through, and safely conducted. I felt I’d been reacting and playing catch up since Summer’s death. I needed to go back to my notes and just…plot.
I should have contacted the parcel delivery place and tried to find out who really sent the flowers. I could have gotten a description from them. I also should have been following Parker, seeing who he was meeting with when he thought no one was watching.
Instead I’d had to meet with lawyers because I was being sued and police officers because my office was attacked. All the distraction, all the trouble was coming from Parker’s direction. I chided myself because my relationship with Jimmy had also thrown me off, and I’d put myself in positions where I could be cornered in bathrooms and threatened. All that needed to stop right now.
I resolved to regroup and follow the leads like I was conducting an investigation for a client. I usually started with the paperwork. I had financial information on Parker. I needed to go line by line through his bank and credit card statements. I needed to figure out if he was in trouble at work, and I needed to follow that where it led.
But the most important thing I should have done had never crossed my mind. I should have investigated Summer. What had she done, specifically, to set off Parker? Jimmy said she made overtures about leaving him, what did that mean? Did she retain a divorce lawyer? Had she told Parker? Did she change the locks on their home? What set the events leading up to her death in motion? I should have known about the estate she’d bought and left me. I could have handled the situation better. I hadn’t handled this investigation well, not by a long shot.
We pulled in front of the hotel, and I followed Jimmy to Salem’s room. Salem opened the door and pulled me into a huge hug. Lights flashed behind my eyes, but I hugged him back.
“Reyna, I was so worried!”
“Well, I’m fine.”
“She needs to rest,” Jimmy said.
“I need to get to work.”
Jimmy threw his hands up with exasperation.
I set my jaw and stared at him.
Salem had papers in his hand. He cleared his throat and handed them to me. “Well, uh, these are the keystroke logs for Parker. There’s something that’s kind of interesting.”
Jimmy shook his head and walked out to the terrace.
“He’s not reacting well to my inability to let this go,” I explained.
Salem looked out at Jimmy and something crossed over his features…sympathy?
“What was interesting?” I asked Salem.
I took the paper and sat down at the little desk.
“Parker got into the office pretty early yesterday. His first email went out at six in the morning.” Salem leaned over my shoulder and pointed.
“Who’d he send it to?”
“A guy named S. Morrison. See, he typed in an inside web address? This email went to someone in the company.”
“OK,” I said reading the papers.
The computer printout didn’t have any form, just keystrokes. Salem’s software divided it into chunks by time. So if Parker typed an email followed by another email, I’d have two paragraphs indicating the time lapse. Other than that, I couldn’t tell what context the writing was in. Email or letter, even searches on the computer were all logged as text with a few symbols for things like space bar, tab, return, etc.
The text I was reading now was short, just one sentence.
We need to talk.
“He sent the guy at least five emails in the morning alone.”
“Is that rare? We’d have to see how it compares to the rest of his traffic.”
“Well, I did that. He emailed the whole department about the merger and audit. It’s just a general, ‘Lets get our ducks in a row, people,’ type of memo. He also sent a couple updates to other department heads, but the emails to this Morrison guy were the only repeats.”
I scanned the pages. All five messages were variations of the same sentiment. Parker wanted to meet with this Morrison guy pretty badly.
“Too bad we can’t tell if he got a response.”
“We can, actually. Parker typed a response to an email.”
Salem took the papers and leafed through them. He pointed to another short, one sentence paragraph.
On the border.
I wrinkled my nose.
“What in the world does that mean? They’re going to meet in Canada or something?”
“I thought you could figure it out.”
I stared at the sentence. Nothing brilliant flashed into my aching head. “I don’t know. Maybe its nothing.”
“All of his other correspondence is wordy. The guy loves typing. But these one sentence cryptic messages are weird. I mean Parker is the head of a department, and he’s begging this guy for a meeting? Who does that in a big company? There’s always a hierarchy, always.”
Salem was making sense. Why not just pick up a phone? Why not go and meet the guy in the lunch room or walk to whatever part of the building he worked in? Parker was a bully. He loved to be feared, but he was always good at being teacher’s pet to his higher ups. This email smacked of neither. This email wasn’t to a colleague or underling. It was worth a closer look.
“OK, well we need to call the Veno switchboard and find out where this S. Morrison guy works in the building.” I said. “Still, I mean, why not leave your office and go find the guy if it’s so important, right?”
“Unless this isn’t work related and Parker didn’t want the conversation overheard.”
“Did you see this list?”<
br />
“Yeah, I think he was calling up documents from the archives. It’s like a search list. See these?”
He pointed to a series of initials. ANT/Decon1Q, RD, ACCT, ANT/Decon2Q, OS, IS, ANT/Decon3Q, MKT, EXP.
“What are they?”
“I know from the email headings I’ve seen that RD is Research and Development, ACCT is accounting, and MKT is marketing. I don’t know what the other ones are. I checked the brochure I have of the company and none of the departments correspond to any of the initials.”
“You know, this ANT/Decon keeps repeating.”
Salem looked back the papers. “I know, but there are no departments with those letters.”
I had a tickle in my brain about those letters but I couldn’t place it.
Jimmy came in from the terrace and unbuttoned his jacket. I watched his long fingers work the buttons and it hit me. “Salem, where’s the video feed of you?”
“Uh, it’s still on the button camera.”
“Load it up!”
I bounced on the bed, and Jimmy raised his eyebrows.
“Go past the flirting with Cary, go to when you were looking in the box.”
Salem queued up the video, and Jimmy sat down next to me.
“Got something?”
“I think so.”
Salem stopped the video and then played it in slow motion. The image of the papers in the box filled the television screen. It was the supply inventories that Cary had sorted for Parker’s department.
“What are you looking for?” Salem asked.
“I’ll know it in a second,” I said. “Go forward.”
Salem advanced the frame and then we were looking at the second page he’d lifted out of the box. My heart rammed in my chest. “There!”
Jimmy leaned forward and read it out loud.
“Shane Morrison ANT/Decon. Laboratory, Non-Prescription OTC Research Department, Supply Quality Technician.”
“S. Morrison is Shane,” Salem said.
“Why would the head of the whole department need to urgently get in touch with a lowly tech in one of his labs?”
“What’s ANT/Decon?”
Salem was already on his laptop. He looked at me and grinned. “The company phone directory has an Antitussives, Antihistamine, and Decongestion lab. It’s where they make over the counter cold medicine.”
“Parker kept going back to that lab on his search list, right?”
“Yup. It was kind of a random search, but yeah.”
Jimmy looked over my shoulder.
“I’m assuming the 1Q, 2Q, and 3Q at the end of each search stands for quarters.”
“You’re right,” I told him. “I hadn’t thought of that. So Parker called up the records for almost a year’s worth of supplies for a lab that makes cold medicine.”
“Yes, and now he’s practically stalking a tech who works in that lab,” Salem added.
Jimmy rubbed his chin and clicked his tongue. He was mulling something over. He did that when he was debating whether or not to tell me something.
“What are you thinking?”
“Well…you said that Parker’s company is going through a merger and that there was an audit.”
“Yeah, that’s why I was trying to prove he was skimming money from petty cash.”
“Well, audits of companies before a merger are not limited to money.”
I looked at the email and thought for a second. This was turning into something.
“You think Parker is panicking over an audit of department supplies? I mean, those types of labs are regulated and monitored closely, right?” I got up and paced. I looked at the television. Supply lists, technicians, and panic.
“Uh, you guys,” Salem called. He turned his laptop around so we can see it. “I did a search for complaints against Veno Pharmaceuticals and cold medicine, and I got this.”
A search engine grabbed an article written in a British newspaper. We pulled it up. A local writer had written a call to boycott cough remedies and syrup manufactured by several U.S. companies. One of which was Veno Pharmaceuticals. Apparently they used something called PSE or pseudo-ephedrine in the over- the-counter medicines. She pointed out that PSE was banned for use in the US but that these companies continue to use it in their foreign markets.
“What is pseudo-ephedrine?”
“You don’t know?” Salem looked at me, shocked.
Jimmy and I shook our heads, and Salem sighed heavily, like a teenager does to his woefully uncool parents.
“Pseudo-ephedrine is something they used to put in allergy medicine. It was in the news a few years ago because people were using it to make meth.”
“Huh?” I stared at him.
“Meth. Methamphetamines, you know, speed. It’s like one of the main ingredients. Kids were buying ten to twenty boxes of over-the-counter cold and allergy medicine and using it as a base to make the drug. I even heard of people crushing the tablets and snorting them.”
“That’s right! I had to show my I.D. just to get a box of allergy medicine at the drug store. It wasn’t even prescription,” Jimmy said. “The pharmacist told me I could only buy one box in a two week period.”
“So, let me get this straight. Parker’s department has a lab that researches over-the-counter cold medicine. Does the lab handle foreign market products?”
“Yeah,” Salem said. “Look.”
The supply inventory on the television monitor had a designation after the title, ETM. Salem pointed to the key at the bottom of the page. The initials ETM stood for European Trade Market.
“Check out the last line on the page,” Jimmy said and pointed to the line at the bottom of the page. “This supply list has a section for disposal ticket numbers.”
“What is that?”
“I do environmental law and part of my practice is helping watchdog companies monitor how large manufacturers dispose of their waste.” Jimmy pointed to the television. “For drug companies, they have to have a specialized company incinerate some of their waste. There is a ticket that lists the batch number of the drug, the day and time of disposal, and quantity handed over to be destroyed. The ticket number is recorded as proof of the drug’s disposal.”
I bounced on the bed again, stomach fluttering. We were closing in. “How much you want to bet that Shane Morrison, Quality Control Technician’s job is to make sure things get disposed of correctly?”
“Oh, man,” Salem said quietly. “There’s no way to know if the PSE in their lab was disposed of correctly or not. We don’t have that kind of access.”
“Well, the police do,” Jimmy said.
I agreed.
“Yeah, but this is all vague guesses based on information I stole. I need something more compelling. Parker Evans, the Evans Family, is influential. No police department is going to poke around without a good reason.”
Jimmy cocked his head to the side looking into my eyes.
“What are you thinking about doing, Rain?”
“I want to see who this Shane Morrison guy is.”
“He works at Veno Pharmaceuticals, so we know where to start looking,” Salem offered.
“Hmm…you know what?”
“Field trip?” Salem smiled.
I nodded.
Jimmy looked from me to Salem and then rubbed his face with both hands. He seemed to be on the edge of exhaustion and frustration. “Rain, you can’t go anywhere near that company. The police are investigating Parker and you are on their radar now. You’re a victim in an attempted murder investigation, you’re being sued for wrongful death, and you’re doing illegal information gathering on the guy who’s suing you!”
“We won’t go back to Veno Pharmaceuticals, Jimmy. I promise.”
“We won’t?” Salem asked surprised.
“Nope.”
Salem and Jimmy looked at me expectantly.
“I have a better idea.”
Purple Knot
30
I’ve found that people who aren’t
trying to hide are very easy to track down. The phone company requires a written or verbal request for a phone number to be unlisted or unpublished. It takes effort, and most people don’t do it. Shane Morrison was a prime example. He’d used a job search website to get the job at Veno Pharmaceuticals. Most employers seeking to fill technical or certificated jobs without degrees use them. They’re a convenient way to sift and sort through applicants without chewing up manpower in the office. Once hired, though, most people don’t take their resume offline. Since three of the biggest job search services will hold onto a resume account for a year or more with a minimum fee, I checked those first.
Salem and Jimmy sat outside on the terrace and drank coffee while I worked on the laptop. They were talking in low voices, and I was again glad by how great they seemed to get along.
I logged on as an employer, created an account with a fake business and license number, and then searched for Shane in the certificated laboratory technicians resumes. The first two didn’t have any resumes for S. Morrison, but the last one had three. I checked the compare boxes next to each name and my laptop screen filled with all three resume forms side by side. I sat back and thought for a second.
I grabbed the hotel phone, dialed the number to Veno Pharmaceutical’s main reception and navigated through the phone map until it connected me with the Human Resources desk.
“HR, how can I help you?”
I recognized the voice of the woman Salem had flirted with the other day. Her name was Cary, I thought.
“Oh, Cary, I’m so sorry. I must have hit the wrong extension. Can you connect me with the Antitussives lab?”
She hesitated, but since I’d called her by name, she didn’t want to admit she had no idea who I was.
“Uh, yeah,” Cary recovered.
“Hey thanks,” I said. “See you on Thursday, right?”
“Oh…sure,” Cary said. “I’m going to switch you over now, OK?”
“M-kay,” I said cheerfully.
“Main research desk,” a woman answered.
“Hi, I’m calling for Shane?” I said with a sing song voice. “I’m from Human Resources. We’re updating our birthday list?”
Purple Knot Page 18
